What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
(OP)
If you're currently employed as an engineer, what percentage of your job duties are spent doing actual engineering work? By that I mean tasks that you couldn't do if you didn't have your engineering degree.
I'm a bit dissapointed that probably 80-90% of my job could be performed by someone without a degree. Is this typical?
Thanks,
-Christine
I'm a bit dissapointed that probably 80-90% of my job could be performed by someone without a degree. Is this typical?
Thanks,
-Christine





RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
I know enough about flying planes to do 90% of an airline pilot's job. You wouldn't want to be on board with me for that other 10%!
http://www.EsoxRepublic.com
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
My first job out of school was doing ultrasonic inspection of pipe welds at nuke plants. That was 99% book keeping, but when we found a crack, there was some juicy technical work...
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
Coka
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
As I said in one of the PE threads, because I'm not a designer, I had to do some hard thinking about whether I was an engineer at all. I don't sit with a calculator, I don't draw anything, I don't use fancy analysis programs. But I handle questions that the inspectors (who have five times my experience but not my education) can't answer, and that's the difference. "Engineering judg(e)ment" is where it's at. TheTick is right--even if most of what you do could be done by someone else, it's the rest that you're really there for. ("Drawing chalk line, $2. Knowing where to put the chalk line: $9,998.")
Hard to say how much of what I do couldn't be done by a non-engineer. I think most indivdual tasks could be given to various non-engineers but I don't know that I could hand off the entire package to one person.
After a certain number of years out of school, what one did in school often becomes much less relevant, and the value of the education seems less obvious. What you're left with is the pattern of thinking that the education established, combined with the innate ability that led you to get that education to begin with.
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
Eng-tips gives me something more interesting to think about each day!
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
Over the past few years I'd say 70% of my time was spent on engineering tasks (e.g. calculations, detailing, writing specs etc.)
Recently I've been appointed project manager of a small project. My actual time spent doing engineering tasks has since dropped to about 40-50% (And thats still much more than some other PM's in the office)
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
Cheers
Greg Locock
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
In my case I am the only engineer (degreed) at my location who works in R&D, this obviously results in an engineering workload of >75%. However the pay is less, the education is more, the work is trying at times, mistakes are common. Its well worth it to me. (Although I could use more pay, who couldn't.)
What I do is pretty much what I've wanted to do all my life. I cant even entertain thoughts of a different job, let alone management/paperwork.
nick
(Lab engineer/metallurgist/troubleshooter)
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
For me, I spend on average 50% of my time for the year performing actual engineering work related to my discipline. Also, I have feast and famine cycles because I perform technical support to Power Plants. As with any business, when the Plants are in production things slow down and I perform "other" duties like catching up on reports. However, when scheduled or unscheduled outages occur, outage support functions go into high gear and I am off to the races.
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
"Eat well, exercise regularly, die anyways."
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
Hg
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
When I worked at a large company (GE) there were bodies available to do that peripheral stuff so we could focus on just the engineering projects. At a smaller company, wearing more hats means less of my time is spent on engineering work. I'm an expensive machinist, but not that much more than a union or contract machinist, especially when you consider the quick turn/low volume of machining that might be needed on a given development program.
I agree with The Tick, and Thomas Edison said it best: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
The time required to reach the conclusion that the document is all goofed up and telling this flat on the face of the person should go under the column "Engineering". The time taken to mince the words and figure out how to say it shall be charged under "Diplomacy". This may be found in the Management worksheet.
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?
Now, I'm in maintenance. And so far, the actual engineering work is about 10%. I just have to assign an eletrician or a mechanic to a machine with troubles. However, there are some things that they have never stumbled in, and that's when I get the chance to actually do some engineering. I also look around the plant for some dangers, or processes that may be optimized, however my supervisor hasn't left much work to do in that area.
In the rest of the time, it's just paperwork, or checking the pretty girls in the office...
RE: What Percentage of Your Job is Actual Engineering?